Customer Reviews

In Den Garten Pharaos

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First off, I can't say anything about the two bonus tracks. I'm going to review the original release, which is what I own (on Spalax, probably). Experimental or ambient music gets a bad rap, maybe because any schmuck can burn up studio time twiddling and noodling and producing a halfway decent set of sonic textures. So many of these albums fall into the "meh" category; meaning that the music might be nice enough, but is somehow lacking. Lacking guts, lacking a really serious approach, lacking honesty. Fear not: Florian Fricke back in 1971 had his finger on the pulse of the cosmos, and this album is like the field notes from some very far-out explorations. Not overly psychedelic in a tacky way, the two songs here don't feature broad sonic strokes, but rather an accumulation of muted rhythms, buried washes of lovely old Moog noises, some clattery and strangely menacing drumming, and go on long enough to let you settle in and enjoy the spaces being created. In a way this is a precursor to New Age music; but somewhere along the way this ill-fated genre lost its focus on human experience in all its forms and decided (for the most part) to focus on feel-good pap. This is music made by a thinking passionate man, made to be heard with humility and awe. "Vuh" in particular is simply beyond beautiful. It's the soundtrack of a spacecraft crash-landing in a lush, green jungle, filled with natural but alien sounds, but somewhere beneath the bird cries and animal chatterings is the hum of distant machinery... humming louder... approaching?... the colours of the jungle are changing now, greens to blues to flame red and searing yellow, and your companions seem to have disappeared... but you're strangely unafraid. And then - - -

Back when Moog synthesizers took up the space of an entire wall of any largish room - Florian was creating these beautiful pieces of music, how he got his hands on one of these remarkable monstrosities is probably a whole story in itself.
This is my favorite offering from Popol Vuh, mostly long solo synth music with bongos. This isn't dance music, nor is it the type of music you'd want in your car. This music is relaxing and surprising, and perhaps is best enjoyed the way a 15 year old kid might sit in a bedroom alone with the lights out just "ponderin'".
The bonus tracks are a little tossed off. Especially one of them, which is a bit of an annoyance with a bit more modulation, and static repetition - not that it's bad, it just doesn't fit. I can't be bothered to get the names of the tracks down, sorry. I just enjoy the music.
In den Garten Pharaos is a beautiful piece of inspiring music and it probably is singly responsible for launching a great many similarly wide open space synth experimenting bands, Tangerine Dream not being the least of which.

Grab it, it's a sweetheart.